Toot or Tweet – Social Networking or Just Noise?

Very much agree that these mini-message services are little more than a “friendly wave” now and then, though unfortunately well lost in a sea of unknown arms waving for “their bit” of attention.

Stilted format, incomplete thoughts, and mostly about as much fun as having people stop by your desk every 90 seconds just to say “hi” while you are deeply committed to real tasks.

I’ve heard a “Tweet” likened to a “Bar Grunt” – well actually it was likened to something more graphic.

My Twitter account goes dorment for months, then I do ocassionally post. I follow almost no one on Twitter, as though I might be interested in a shared hobby passion, there is no way I want to be bothered with their goings on about a ball game or some interest we don’t share.

For what it is worth tweeting “New Blog Post, come and See it Now!” doesn’t change one’s webstats.

Guess the same number of hits are going to happen each day, with a really clever blog post hitting a multiplier that usually doesn’t stick.

As with Texting, Tweeting is not conversational nor compositional – it has a very limited information carrying ability and it is difficult to avoid the noise.

Not worth the time.

Further complicating these mini-messages is governmental interest in using them:

“We have no way of knowing whether Osama bin Laden is chatting to Abu Hamza on Facebook. Or terrorists could be having a four-way chat on Skype,” he [a spokesman for the Home Office] said.

He said the government was not interested in the contents of the communication: “What we want to monitor is that so-and-so is logged on to that site and spoke to so-and-so. It’s the who, when and where, not the content.”

Looks like time to review your Twitter involvement, as withe governmental interest & archiving of what is supposed to be fleeting mini-messages you might be surprised to find the cost/benefit ratio somewhat negative.